Tweaked Steering Off Trail

[murdered141]

On the first ride up in Houghton, I ventured off trail down some logging road, prolly 3' of pow, the road kept getting narrower so I decided to throw a Chris Burandt move to turn around(tottal fail), burried the sled, so I tugged on the bars and ski to lay it on its side to pack some snow under the track, got out and rode to my riding group, once on trail I noticed my bar's were cocked to the left but skis were aligned perfectly, the bars weren't bent , neither was the riser block, I have the mtx steering conversion on mine. Once back home I continued to examine further, I put a bolt in the pivot arm and through the bottom of the sled to check alignment, ski's were pointing straight, tie rods were not bent, drag link straight also, bolt on the bottom of steering post was tight, steering support block also tight, bars and riser block not bent either, but the bars we're still cocked to the left a bit, I said to myself what gives, #*$&@ is not making sense, was driving me nut's.
I tore the whole front end down, removed the radiator, removed front plastic clip, drilled out approximately 18 rivet's to remove the steering stop bracket and the aluminum support piece, turns out I bent both bracket's and cracked the aluminum piece that the bottom of the steering post bolts in to. No big deal 4 days and $41 later I had 2 new bracket's and 20 black rivets, put er back together and all is straight again.
Here's the stupid #*$&@, when I went my dealer to order the parts I told him theres an updated part with an extra support plate already riveted to the bottom of the steering support plate, he confirmed it with a new part # and showed me a pic of the new part on the computer screen with the extra support, parts come in, I examine the bracket and no support plate on it, dealer gets on the phone with the yamaha parts warehouse is Wisconsin, get this they told him they do have the new bracket with the support plate in stock but wont release it until the pallet of boxes with the old bracket gets used up, I was like wtf!!.
So I call up yamaha customer service, talked to 2 women and told them what I just mentioned, they told me that there is no issue with the bracket that I received and that that is the correct part, I tried getting through to them and telling about the updated part with the support bracket because arctic cat is aware of it failing, they said thats not true and the updated part # might be because of a color change but they dont know, I just fu#$ing told them the problem, what a bunch of morons

 

[cannondale27]

Thanks for calling customer service Murdered. They arent saying anything because this is a safety issue. Have seen way too many of this exact failure. I guarantee they will take note and hopefully a recall before someone gets hurt.

 

[Wamp12000]

This should be a recall, someone is going to get seriously injured or killed one of these days.

Go to Arctic Cat dealer and get P/N 2707-776 thats the updated steering post bracket kit. That's what my dealer installed on my Viper.

 

[murdered141]

This should be a recall, someone is going to get seriously injured or killed one of these days.

Go to Arctic Cat dealer and get P/N 2707-776 thats the updated steering post bracket kit. That's what my dealer installed on my Viper.

Going to a cat dealer was going to be my other option but my yamaha dealer showed me the upgraded part on the computer with the reinforcement plate and updated part# so thats what i thought i was getting, i put in the new old part as i dont want to loose any riding time.

 

[cannondale27]

Going to Cat doesn’t get it in system. Save your receipt

 

[murdered141]

I'm not tottaly blaming the cat design, I did tug on them bars pretty hard, what gets me is their admitting a design flaw by coming out with an updated and supposedly stronger part and then denying that theres a problem with the old part, hasn't yamaha learned anything from prior lawsuits.